Why Would a Trump Megadonor Allegedly Try to Facilitate Covert Talks Between the White House and Russia?

Today's installment in extremely disconcerting revelations about President Trump's alleged connections to Russia comes courtesy of The Washington Post, which reports that Trump megadonor Erik Prince—the Blackwater founder and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos—traveled to Seychelles in January to attend a "secret meeting" with a Russian representative of Vladimir Putin, brokered by the United Arab Emirates crown prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to "establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump." NBC News confirmed the meeting, reporting that Prince and the unnamed Putin associate discussed "Middle East policy," including Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

These stories are getting so numerous and so ludicrous that they're starting to sound like spy-infused Clue solutions—the BLACKWATER GUY met with RUSSIA and THE EMIRATIS in SEYCHELLES to discuss IRAN. Although Prince was not a part of President-elect Trump's transition team, the Post reports that he presented himself as the president's "unofficial envoy" to Zayed and the other UAE officials who agreed to set the whole thing up.

As you might expect, the implicated parties immediately issued a series of shaky denials that raise more questions than provide answers. White House press secretary and noted gaslighting enthusiast Sean Spicer asserted that the administration is "not aware of any meetings" and added that "Erik Prince had no role in the transition," apparently hoping that we'd not consider the possibility that someone not on the official transition team might agree to do something on behalf of the White House. Prince's righteously indignant response, which came through a spokesman, is even better.

Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete
fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why
is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around
with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting
terrorists?

Right. Because as we know, high-profile American citizens never do anything of interest to the intelligence community during their conversations with foreign leaders. Got it. Also, DO YOUR JOBS, SPIES.

Since there's still a lot of innuendo and uncertainty involved, maybe it's best to lay out the range of possible explanations here, depending on how the details shake out. Perhaps:

1. Erik Prince was doing standard shady Erik Prince stuff that had nothing to do with Donald Trump. Wild but true: Prince abruptly moved to Abu Dhabi in 2010 as Blackwater's Stateside legal woes mounted, and the Emiratis paid Prince more than half a billion dollars "to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of carrying out secret operations." Since this man's whole life sounds like the plot of a shitty Robert Ludlum knockoff, maybe Prince just went to the Seychelles to lay the groundwork for his next mercenary operation. Who among us, right?

2. Erik Prince was trying to flex a little bit. Maybe Prince didn't have the sign-off of anyone in the Trump transition team, but figured that since he was a major Trump booster related to a cabinet member–to-be, he could make himself valuable to Russia or his old UAE pals or whoever else made the meeting by pitching his prospective access to the new administration—for a price, of course. Erik Prince is about his money.

3. Erik Prince felt left out. The week before the meeting allegedly took place, American intelligence officials released a report detailing Russia's various election-meddling efforts. If Prince suspected that Trump's interactions with the Kremlin would be subject to careful scrutiny in the future, he might have figured that positioning himself as a powerful, shadowy figure who could get things done outside official channels could be his ticket into the West Wing. Plus, if history is any indication, there is no better way of ingratiating oneself with the Trump administration than showing that you, too, have clandestine connections to Vladimir Putin.

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4. Erik Prince was there because Donald Trump sent him there. If it wasn't Prince's idea, maybe it was the White House's. After all, given the allegations swirling at that time about the extent of the Trump campaign's ties to the Kremlin, no one would know better about the looming need for a capable back-channeler than Trump himself. For what it's worth, the Post's source asserts that it would have been unusual for the cautious Zayed to go ahead with this "without getting a green light in advance from top aides to Trump and Putin, if not the leaders themselves."

Although all of these scenarios are at least plausible, other than the first option, none of them is particularly good. Unfortunately, the Seychelles government doesn't sound like it will be much help in getting to the bottom of this mystery, since they politely explained to the Post that they don't know whether any such meeting even happened.

The Seychelles is the kind of place where you can have a good time
away from the eyes of the media. That’s even printed in our tourism
marketing.

What a delightful-sounding place to maybe craft international conspiracies.

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